Primary 6d have settled well back into the daily classroom routine after a long summer holiday. We spent the first week getting to know our new teacher. Three new children have joined our class so we have all been eager to help them settle into their new school. Everyone has enjoyed hearing about what we did during our holidays. We also wrote all about ourselves and transferred this onto a PowerPoint. We have been practising using adjectives and produced a ‘Name’ Acrostic poem which helped Mrs Bovaird to get to know our personalities and our likes and dislikes.

In Numeracy and Mathematics, we have revised mathematical terminology which has helped us to solve more difficult word problems. eg Quotient, Product, Difference between, Cost etc

We have also been working on fractions, decimal fractions and naming different angles.  Mrs Bovaird has taught us lots of new ‘Brain Triggers’ to help us remember important facts.

Primary 6d have discussed children’s rights, produced a ‘Class Charter’ which is all linked to ‘Rights Respecting School’. We are going to continue to work on this throughout the year using our Jigsaw resource.

In social studies, we revised the continents and we are now going to concentrate on the country- ‘Australia’. We will be looking closely at the similarities and differences between Australia and our own country. In Art, we will be researching famous Australian Artists, producing line drawings and creating colourful paintings  linked to different curricular areas.

P.E days  – Monday and Thursday. Remember to come appropriately dressed.

Homework- Spelling/ Mental-Please return on a Friday. Reading books should be returned on a Thursday.

Hello and welcome back to our class blog!

We have been working very hard this month and demonstrated our commitment to learning during our week of isolation. As always, we were enthusiastic and eager to contribute to our online class discussions!

May is a very special month in the Catholic calendar as it marks the month of Mary. We have taken the time to reflect on how she is the mother of Jesus and Mother to us all. We have also learned about the signs and symbols related to the Feast of Pentecost and discussed ways the Holy Spirit can influence our lives.

We have thoroughly enjoyed reading Charlotte’s Web and we are now reading Chapter 15! We have been using our skimming and scanning skills to locate words in the book we do not understand and have been learning how to use a dictionary to find the definition of these words. We are certainly becoming independent learners!

In PE, we have been learning badminton and hockey skills such as eye-hand coordination, balance, speed and agility. We are definitely a competitive bunch so we were excited to take part in Sports Day! We took part in a sprint race, hurdles, sack race and egg and spoon race! Although the weather was not great, we had so much fun!

In ICT, we have been learning how to create our own digital profiles and we cannot wait to share these with you soon! We also enjoyed learning about the artist Van Gogh and have created our own ‘Starry Night’ piece using oil pastels, focusing on tone and texture.

Fun Fact: We can now translate colours and body parts into French – How cool!

We cannot wait to learn more in June!
Thank you for reading our blog,
P5D and Miss Boyle 🙂

Hello and welcome back to our class blog 🙂

We have been very busy bees since returning to school!
We are now in the last term of Primary 5 and we cannot believe where the time has gone!

Literacy
We are enjoying reading the novel “Charlotte’s Web”. We all feel so sorry for poor Wilbur but we are sure Charlotte will help him. We have been learning comprehension skills such as summarising and predicting. Our listening and talking skills have also improved through class discussions and debates. We love “Writing Wednesdays” and have created excellent pieces of writing recently. We took fabulous notes to make a fact file on SPIDERS! Did you know there are over 35000 species of spiders worldwide and a spider web is stronger than steel?!

Maths
We love learning new concepts in maths! We have been learning how to measure volume and weight and how to use and identify their correct units of measurement. We have also been learning how to complete calculations that involve fractions and decimals. We enjoy putting our mental maths skills to the test during our legendary game of “Battle of the Giants!”

This term, we are currently learning about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We worked together to suggest ways we can reduce our carbon footprint and keep our earth clean. Some suggestions included walking/cycling to school, turning off  lights when we leave the room and of course, reduce, reuse, recycle! On “Earth Day” we created playground art to remind all pupils how important it is to look after our environment in order to keep our earth clean.

We were so excited to return to the forest this week! As we have been learning about spiders, it seemed like the perfect time for a minibeast hunt! We used our maths skills to create a tally and bar chart of all the minibeasts we found. We also enhanced our communication skills by working in teams. It was so much fun!

We cannot wait to learn more in May!
Thank you for reading our blog,
P5D and Miss Boyle 🙂

P5D have had a fun-filled December with lots of learning of course!

We are so excited for Christmas and have been learning about the signs and symbols of Advent and the Nativity. We  designed Advent wreaths with natural resources during an outdoor learning lesson and made Christmas decorations in the forest! Yesterday, we put our art skills to the test and painted the decorations using glitter paint. We can’t wait to add them to our class Christmas tree!

In literacy, we have been learning about homophones. We often get mixed up with “there, their and they’re” but after our lesson, I’m sure we won’t be getting mixed up any more. We have also been learning about the features of instructional writing and wrote instructions on ‘How to decorate a Christmas tree’.  Additionally, we have been learning how to write a diary entry. P5D have some fantastic writers!

In maths, we have been working in pairs to solve mathematical Christmas problems. They were tricky but a lot of us managed to crack the code! We have also been learning about measurement, symmetry and directions using the four points of a compass. We are continuing to work on our multiplication tables to make sure we know these by heart!

Also, we are very excited about our Christmas performance on Google Classroom. It is a must-watch!! Miss Boyle and Mrs Burns said that we were all superstars!

We can’t wait to see what the New Year will bring.

Thank you for reading our blog. We would like to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! 🙂

P5d, Miss Boyle and Mrs Burns.

What a fabulous month we have had in P5D!

We started the month learning about All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day. We learned the “Eternal Rest” prayer to pray for our loved ones who have sadly passed away. We have also been learning about important Saints, such as Saint John Paul, Saint Margaret, Pope Leo I and Saint Andrew. It is the feast day of Saint Andrew today and we celebrated him by wearing tartan, listening to Scottish music and creating a “stained glass” paper craft! We have also been learning about other faiths such as Hinduism and Sikhism. Some of the children in P5D shared their experience of “Diwali”, it was very interesting!

We celebrated World Children’s Day on the 20th of November by wearing blue and protesting for climate change! We made amazing posters to showcase our knowledge of climate change and why we must prevent it! We also wrote a persuasive letter to the COP26 president to express our concerns and demand change. We used lots of persuasive language and punctuation to emphasise our worry for the planet!

In literacy, we have been writing non-chronological reports about natural disasters. We researched important facts that would make our report very interesting to read! P5D could tell you all about floods, droughts, tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes! We also wrote an imaginative piece called the “The Magic Box” which really tested our vocabulary skills. However, we thought of very exciting things to write about so it was great fun 🙂

In maths, we have been learning about BODMAS, measurement (how to convert units of measure, how to calculate the perimeter, how to answer calculations involving measurement), fractions, division and word problems which we can solve much faster after learning the RUCSAC method. We have been continuing our mental multiplication games to ensure our multiplication tables are spot on!

In outdoor learning, we have been learning to use our listening skills. We know how important it is to follow instructions, especially outside of school grounds! We were very excited to make bird nests last week. The class were split into two groups, half the class used their hands to create a bird nest while the other half had to use pegs (as if they were beaks). It was so much fun and we learned how lucky we are to have hands!

It has been an exciting month and we can’t wait to see what we get up to in December 🙂

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog,
Miss Boyle, Mrs Burns and P5D.

P5d have had a very busy and wonderful October!

October was very special because it was the month we received the Sacrament of the Eucharist. We celebrated our First Holy Communion on the 24th of October at St. Cadoc’s Church. We were also very lucky to be able to celebrate this occasion in school! We had a fabulous class party where we played lots of fun games and dressed in our own clothes! A massive thank you to the PSA for supplying party snacks and cake!

We are loving the outdoors at the moment as the autumnal colours are beautiful! We have been learning how to use a compass and we created maps to help guide our peers to the “hidden treasure”. We have also been estimating, measuring and using our problem solving skills in the forest to challenge the statement “The tallest trees have the longest leaves”.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been learning about our emotions and ways of managing them. We created a “Wellbeing Wheel” to help us. We also practiced mindfulness meditation to help us relax before starting class work.

We have been working very hard in maths, focussing on improving our multiplication and division through lots of fun starter activities. We are scoring higher each week which shows that we are definitely improving!

In literacy, we have covered a range of genres. We have written limericks (they were great fun!), a personal writing piece about our October Week and a spooky imaginative piece about a Haunted House!!

This week we explored the theme of Halloween through writing, maths and of course, art! We also have our Halloween Party tomorrow! We can’t wait to see all the fabulous costumes.

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog!
See you in November!

P5D, Miss Boyle and Mrs Burns 🙂

The children in Primary 5D have settled in really well since returning in August. We have been learning lots and having fun at the same time! Outdoor learning is part of the core curriculum this year and has given us the fantastic opportunity to discover nature and learn more about our environment. We have been using our problem solving skills to create dens in the forest, our artistic skills to create muddy faces and we have taken inspiration from autumn leaves to create an autumn poem. We have also been given the opportunity to plant trees in our playground! This was very exciting news and we used our measuring skills to find the perfect spot!

This month, our maths groups have been learning about symmetry, measurement, 3D shapes, number processes, calculations and bar graphs. It is Maths Week Scotland so we are trying to incorporate maths into as many lessons as possible! We definitely have a few maths wizards in our class! Additionally, we have been working on our writing skills this month, particularly personal writing and poetry. We are also learning to analyse, summarise and sequence during comprehension activities.

We know how important our health and well being is which is why we have carried out lots of activities to help us understand how to respond to different feelings and situations. We have been learning about the importance of a growth mindset and to always try even when you feel like giving up! We have also been learning about The Rights of the Child, what it means to feel included and the importance of teamwork! To help us feel at ease during our busy days at school, we have set aside time to practice mindfulness meditation. In R.E., we have been learning about the Creation Story, St. Francis of Assisi, the importance of forgiveness and walking in God’s footsteps.

We can’t wait to see what the month of October will bring!

Primary 5D, Miss Boyle & Mrs Burns 🙂

Today is a very important day. It is not only ‘Crazy Hair Day’, it’s also ‘Time to Talk’ Day. This is a day when we remember the importance of talking about our feelings and worries. It is important to talk about your feelings and worries because keeping them inside can make us lose our confidence and we can become overwhelmed.

We can talk to our parents and family members, friends and adults we trust.

To celebrate ‘Time to Talk’ Day, we have been making presentations to help our friends manage their emotions.

We hope you all have a fantastic holiday and look forward to sharing our next blog with you later.

P4d and Miss O’Hara

Last Saturday, people in different parts of the world celebrated Chinese New Year. This week in school, we found out lots of cool facts about this amazing festival. On Monday, we made Chinese New Year decorations and fortune tellers. We found out how to record numbers from zero to ten in Mandarin and we created calculations for our friends to solve. Some of us also made posters displaying our learning about Chinese New Year using both pictures and words.

On Tuesday, we used our imaginations to write a Chinese New Year story. In our stories, we told the reader about the events our characters experienced, making sure that they were in chronological order – this means that we wrote about events in the order that they would have happened. For example, we began explaining how the characters celebrated New Year’s Eve, then went on to write in detail about New Year’s Day.

On Wednesday, Miss Burdett taught us how to create a podcast. First, we had to decide on a specific theme, which was something related to St Cadoc’s Primary School. Then, we worked in partners to plan out the content of our podcasts using a storyboard, making sure that everyone had equal opportunity to speak. We recorded our podcasts, timed them and even added in sound effects to make them more interesting for the listener.

As part of Other World Religions fortnight, we worked individually, in pairs or threes to select and research a faith other than our own and present our learning to our classmates in a format of our choice (e.g. PowerPoint or poster). We have been sharing these confidently, practising effective talking and listening skills.

Lastly, we have been learning about ways of keeping our data secure online. We understand that longer, more complex passwords make it harder for other people to access our information and have been practising creating secure passwords.

As you have read, we have had a very busy week and are looking forward to more fun and challenging learning next week!

P4d and Miss O’Hara

We would like to wish all of our family and friends a very happy new year! We have had a very busy first two weeks back at school.

To begin 2020, we have decided to learn more about climate change. From the news, we have discovered that bushfires are causing devastation in Australia and that the ocean temperatures are now higher than they have ever been before. We know that this is caused by global warming.

We have been learning about the factors causing global warming, like factories, planes and cars producing pollution (also known as greenhouse gases). We have been thinking of ways in which we could help reduce the production of greenhouse gases and have made posters to raise awareness about climate change. Here are a few suggestions you might like to try which will help you to reduce your ‘carbon footprint’:

·         Try to walk instead of using cars all the time

·         More people could start using electric cars

·         Car sharing (e.g. travelling to school in a group) to reduce the number of cars on the road.

·         Reduce the amount of single use plastic we use in day to day life.

·         Use renewable energy sources e.g. wind power, solar panels and wave power.

We hope you will join us in taking care of our environment.

Thanks for reading,

P4d and Miss O’Hara